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Corinne A. Kratz
Smithsonian Series in Ethnographic Inquiry. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., and London, 1994. xviii + 470 pp., 31 b/w photos, 11 charts, 2 maps, appendixes. $69 hardcover, $24.95 softcover.
Misty L. Bastian
"Marriage," Corinne Kratz tells us at the end of her fine ethnography of Okiek women's initiation, "is not a peaceable kingdom" (p. 337). Young women who have undergone initiation have symbolically become wild heifers that must be domesticated by the lions (initiated men) that surround them. This is not an easy or simple process, even though the entire initiation sequence has been directed toward helping to make it so. This struggle, in a society that prides itself on its connections to the forest as well as to other groups-and, indeed, to certain goods from the larger Kenyan polity-is inscribed during initiation onto the bodies of women. But as Kratz makes clear, this inscription is never unidimensional. The practices associated with it come with a price for both male and female onlookers and intimates-a price paid in emotion and memory, in potential loss of respect and lineage pride, and in hard-earned cash and commodities.
Affecting Performance is the product of many years of intensive fieldwork as well as an enviable knowledge of local history and earlier ethnographers' material on Okiek and related peoples. Given the wealth of material presented, it would be difficult to summarize here were it not for the fact that it is so tightly argued. In Part 1 ("The Challenge of Ritual Efficacy," chaps. 1, 2) Kratz introduces her reader to the major issues of her work: how to integrate questions of meaning, movement, and experience within the ritual context of Okiek women's initiation. She also reminds us of the important role initiation has played in the history of anthropological inquiry, positioning her book securely within that tradition while at the same time intimating how anthropological writing on this topic could be richer and more carefully analyzed. In Part 2 ("Ethnographic and Historical Background," chaps. 3, 4)...